


I Don't Feel So Alone

by CopperBeech



Series: Absent Without Leave [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Again, BAMF Aziraphale, Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, F/M, M/M, Recreational Drug Use, West London
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-16
Updated: 2019-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-18 18:00:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20643341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: The Demon Beelzebub is unable to resist the pull of living in the mortal world, but she has to remain a Lord of Hell, and it's straining nerves and alliances. Also, she likes weed.“See - I realize now that Dagon is a fish sandwich. Not just a fish, a fish sandwich. Covered in mayonnaise that’s gone off. If we see him again we dip him in vinegar. Not holy wanker. I mean water.” She drew deeply and passed the roach to Crowley.“Naaaah, Gabriel's the holy wanker. Ssssssst. Ackgkkgk.” Crowley brought  a heartfelt cough up from the depths of his narrow chest. “Tosser. Plonker. Absolute  twatwaffle.” Crowley coughed even more deeply, just as a pounding came on the door.Well, they'll stone ya when you're trying to be so goodThey'll stone ya just a-like they said they wouldThey'll stone ya when you're tryin' to go homeThen they'll stone ya when you're there all aloneBut I would not feel so all aloneEverybody must get stoned.Bob Dylan - "Everybody Must Get Stoned"





	I Don't Feel So Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Rated Mature because of the depictions of recreational drug use, as the author would not wish to be accused of dangling such, ahem, forbidden fruit in front of the underage. Especially as author's own experience is limited to trying to survive the pain leading up to a double hip replacement. But one attended college in the Seventies. Observation is all.
> 
> You will absolutely be at sea with this if you haven't read either "Beelzebub's Day Out" or the sequel "Double Date." The scenario has now definitively run away with me.

She was waiting for him in front of the block of flats when he pulled up in the Bentley – Beelzebub, the Lord of Flies, known on the surface of the earth as Bella, waiflike in black jeans and a puffer jacket against the December cold of west London. At close to midday there was hardly anyone in evidence in the little community of Brookside, a medley of townhouses, flats and interconnecting walks. She pointed him to a car park in the back of the block.

“What’re we doing in bloody Feltham? Arse end of London, this is.”

“It’s Chaz’s place,” she said as they came back round to the entryway and up the stairs. “The rents are in a student budget, he says. He is at his family’s in Horsham for term break but he left me the key. He told me I could use his place any time I wanted to come up to London. It is very helpful.”

“Chaz, eh? How’s that going?” Crowley had gone above and beyond the call of duty, or anything else, to make sure that a young university student felt comfortable as an unwitting participant in what appeared to be Beelzebub’s continuing experiment in, for lack of a more precise term, humanity. It was, in a way, Crowley’s fault for standing athwart Hell and crying Stop, which had led her to Think About Things, but he had decided that it was her look-out what she did with it. He’d been nonetheless intrigued at getting her text.

“It is… interesting,” she said as she used the second of two keys to let them into the vestibule of a small top-floor flat.

“Oh. Well I see that’s all I’m going to get out of _you._”

* * *

The flat was titchy but had a big stereo outfit, shelves on shelves of books, and some nice liquor for a student. Early in the day though.

“Is the angel coming?”

“He had an estate sale in Richmond this morning. Said it was half way out the rail line and he’d meet us when he was done. He’ll find three or six precious volumes and bang on about them for weeks. What was it you wanted to show us?” Her text had seemed fairly urgent – she’d gotten adept with her Virgin phone, a little miraculously rejiggered from its original settings, and her avi was now a rather striking stock nature photo of a fly close up.

“I found it last time I was here. I only suspected, but when I went back I made sure.”

“Oh, been coming by regular?”

“Once before. Well, twice. We came out on the train. I had never been on a train. Riding backwards is extraordinary.”

Crowley tried to imagine what his view of the world would have been if he’d been stuck Below, doing administrative things and only periodically being detailed up to whisper depravities in some human’s ear. It occurred to him he would have missed a lot.

For instance, his angel. Hell had done him a favor.

* * *

“It hasn’t stopped,” she said. “The junior demons especially. They have no power, they have no privilege. But the murmuring reaches them. That you defied Hell _and_ Heaven. That you found something about this world that made you stand in the path of Armageddon.”

“Armageddon was always a bit overwritten,” said Crowley. “I mean, honestly. Live with them and you’ll see how they go on about football matches. And then everything goes back to normal.”

“It wasn’t a football match. It was meant to be the End Of All. And then it wasn’t.”

“You were right shirty about it at the time.”

“And then... well, I thought about things.” She looked into the fridge. “Is it too early for a pint? I would like to offer you hospitality.” She opened a Tennent’s for herself, regardless. “It would seem others have thought, as well. The junior demons have… been finding their way out.”

“Aren’t they stuck Downstairs?”

“They have to use portals. Those are regulated – orders, permissions. They have been finding ways around it – ways up and back that are not on our grid. Not just romance novels now – one of them has been learning computer languages, I don’t know why but we found the files, and another found a way to patch in the Great British Baking Show. You don’t want to know what Hastur was like when he found out that forty lesser demons had been following it for weeks and were trying to make the Queen Mother’s Cake.”

“How did you handle it?”

“I counseled that we give the parties responsible enough – what is it they say here? – rope to hang themselves, then went about muddying the evidence. So far, no one has been called to account.”

“How long can you keep that up?”

“I do not know.” She stretched up to a high cupboard. “If you do not want bitter there is this wonderful herb. Would you like to try it? He said I could use anything in the oregano jar.”

“Oregano…?”

“He says it helps with his migraines. What are those?”

“Ah. Well… from what I read, a little like Falling, only some of them throw up during.”

She looked very thoughtful. “So, perhaps a remedy for Falling as well. Let us have some!”

And Crowley stared in utter speechlessness as she dug into a kitchen drawer for a packet of papers and deftly, expertly rolled a fat joint.

“I watched,” she said proudly, lighting it from the gas ring.

_* * *_

“Really, not much since the eleventh century – back when I infiltrated the Order of Assassins. Ran on the stuff, they did.”

“I had never heard of it at all.”

Crowley passed the joint back, exhaling explosively moments later.

“Oh, _Chaz, _ lad, this is some _amazing _shit.”

“He said what was in that jar was the best.”

“This is – is – did I ever tell you about when someone first discovered wine? It was absolute _plonk_ but it was like the heavens opening up. No I don’t mean the Heavens. We’d gone off Heaven a bit by then. Like the far brazen, I mean horizon….”

“We didn’t used to really talk, Crowley.”

“So what is it with you – Bella Bella tell me about your fella?”

“He’s mental, last time he walked up and down in the middle of the room here reciting poetry and asked me to follow along with the book, and if he got a line wrong he had to drink a shot.”

Crowley dissolved in giggles.

“”Did’je ever – I mean – did you just _tell_ him he’d got it wrong to see him get pissed?”

“That would be dishonest, Crowley.”

Crowley literally rolled about, which was impressive for someone with so many angles to his corporation.

“I am trying to live as they do.”

“Got a fussy – funny view of it.”

“Hand me that paperclip?”

“Let’s crank this sound up. _My game of love has just begun/Love runs from my head down to my toes/My love is pumping through my veins_ – c’mon, a tick louder.”

* * *

“See - I realize now that Dagon is a fish sandwich. Not just a fish, a fish sandwich. Covered in mayonnaise that’s gone off. If we see him again we dip him in vinegar. Not holy wanker. I mean water.” She drew deeply and passed the roach to Crowley.

“Naaaah, Gabriel's the holy wanker. Ssssssst. Ackgkkgk.” Crowley brought a heartfelt cough up from the depths of his narrow chest. “Tosser. Plonker. Absolute twatwaffle.” Crowley coughed even more deeply, just as a pounding came on the door. Beelzebub took pity on his hacking convulsions and opened the door, leaving it on the chain.

“D’ye mind turning it down, mates? Some of us are trying to study.”

“Oh, I am sorry. Crowley, can you quiet the music? – Would you like to come in?”

“I’m working on my term project, I got an extension – “

“I was just about to roll another one of these.”

* * *

“Oh seriously, were you at _that_ concert? _Brilliant. _Must be older than you look.”

“We are all as old as time,” intoned Crowley.

“Well, in one way I suppose…”

“At least, her and me, don’t know about you, mate. When were you born?”

“1997 – “

“Month?”

“October. 4th. Why?”

“Aoooo, you’re a _Libra! _You know the _Earth_ is a Libra?”

“Seriously?”

Another knock at the door. “We turned it down once!” shouted Crowley.

“_Crowley????”_ came the bemused, dear, familiar voice from the landing outside.

“Ohh –– oh fuck oh fuck. He is going to be _so_ bent. You know what Aziraphale is like when he’s bent?” Crowley’s eyes crinkled into crows’ feet the size of dinosaur prints, visible even outside the lenses of his sunglasses. “He _smites!_”

Beelzebub nodded solemnly. “I have seen him.”

“If your mate’s violent, I’m leaving.”

“I don’t mean like that. _I’m coming!” _called Crowley.

“I’m leaving,” repeated the neighbour.

* * *

“Crowley, what on – _earth_ – will you _turn off _ that _bebop?”_

“Bebop. _Bop,”_ Crowley said as he flicked the control.

“And how do you expect me to – hello, my dear. Forgetting my manners.”

“Good afternoon, Principality.”

“This is dreadful. Not a breath of air in here. Let’s open a window.”

“Can’t do that,” objected Crowley. “Whole of Brookside’ll get the giggles.”

“There’s a fan,” said Beelzebub. “In there.”

Crowley slouched more than walked his way into the loo and turned on the ceiling extractor fan. “There we go. Oh will you look. The bloody bog is facing the bloody door and _that door_ is facing the bloody door to the outside landing, knock knock, _who thought of this –-” _ Crowley sat down on the edge of the bathtub, then slid all the way in, helplessly giggling.

“Crowley, really – “

“ ‘S’this how you did it? _Bring me a rubber duck!!!_” gasped Crowley, booted feet protruding from the tiled edge of the tub.

“Please!” hissed Aziraphale. “Not that friendly!” Meaning that they were on terms of truce with the Lord of Flies, who seemed to have gone full rogue from Hell, but did not need to know that Crowley’s invulnerability to Holy Water involved the minor circumstance that it hadn’t been Crowley, but rather Aziraphale in his form, immersed in it.

Crowley nodded gravely. “S’pose not.” Beelzebub, however, was oblivious.

* * *

Regretfully, Crowley coached her in the technique of sobering up. It worked the same way with botanicals as with distillates.

Aziraphale was, at best, testy about helping demons, even in the current climate. He kept fanning the heavy air with an issue of _Sport_ that had been in a messy stack of poetry books and business-class texts on a side table.

“There is something about this location on the Earth. I am sure there are many like it. A place of decay and renewal. Of city and field. Of comings and goings.” Crowley sensed that “Bella” was absorbing some of Chaz’s fondness for poetic construction.

“Well, Heathrow’s right up that way.”

”More than that. It is a place where the walls are thin, and a place where the usual watches and wards... break down. I never sense that anyone is seeking me here.”

“You’re saying Feltham’s off the grid. Crap, anyone in London knows that.”

“And so do the lesser demons. This is one of the places they’re coming up. I know because I saw one. I have a sense of the location, but I want to see where, exactly where.” She reached for her puffer coat. “I think we need to talk to them.”

* * *

“It’s somewhere close to here,” Beelzebub said. “Perhaps one of these shops.” The day was overcast, and even with Christmas decorations and winking lights, the High Street had the look of a tired performer getting through the last set with Adderall and bravado. They were at the quieter end of the street, where several shopfronts were papered over and the steady hum of the Town Centre was a uniform murmur at the edge of hearing. There was a self-cleaning portaloo standing at an angle on the pavement, as if someone had set it down any old way, and a Santander bike-hire rack that remained half full. An early trickle of commuters in business garb periodically came from the train station indicated by signs at the crossing. They had found a bench painted with a peeling Asda advert. It was fairly depressing.

“The two of you avoided detection for so long,” she said. “We knew nothing and neither did Upstairs. Now we have lesser demons trying to… do what I did, spend time here, do mortal things. They are naive. They should know how to protect themselves, but if they see me alone, they will only fear me. I need you.”

“What, we’re setting up a mentoring system?”

“She has a point, Crowley. If Heaven and Hell are changing – if there is no more Plan… then we have only one another…”

The angel squeezed his hand where he had discreetly covered it with his own, between them on the bench. A smallish, shabby man debouched from the cattycornered portaloo and looked about him as if disoriented.

“Is everyone in this town half cut?” said Crowley.

Another smallish shabby man came out of the portaloo.

“_Ohh_, that’s just sordid,” Crowley added.

“No.” Beelzebub. She laid a hand on his arm and then rose, speaking a sentence in a language even Crowley hadn’t heard in centuries. The second man froze, turned to them with a wide-eyed expression of panic. The door of the portaloo opened again. A fine-boned woman with ratty light hair emerged, dressed as if from an Oxfam shop and carrying a bike helmet, of all things. She stopped dead as well.

“They see me as I am – Below,” she said. “_And I see you,_” she called in a louder voice. “_And I will not harm you. Zzzztay, I will keep your zzzsecret. I am on your zzzzside_.”

* * *

The angel and “Bella” had gone inside the town centre for coffees, after despairing of explaining to the junior demons what macchiatos and cappucinos were, exactly. They did have names, but Crowley had tagged them in his mind Winkin, Blinkin and Nod, after characters in a child’s picture-book from the stack of less interesting purchases that Aziraphale was always meaning to repair.

He’d had to explain to them that the entry in the Centre directory for “Demon Recruitment” was nothing but a temporary firm – they had been both alarmed and excited – and with an almost preadolescent enthusiasm, they were listing to him all the reasons they chose to risk going absent without leave from Hell. “I like Cadbury eggs,” said Winkin. “You’d think’s hard as we work, never a break, management would let us have something like Cadbury eggs. Best thing up here. Fact.”

“I like riding bicycles,” said Blinkin, who was the female demon with the helmet. “Sometimes I ride out to Virginia Water. There are _trees._ Never saw trees.”

“I like washing all my things at the launderette,” said Nod wistfully. Well, to each his own. Crowley wondered what he wore while he washed them. Best not to think about it.

“I like pubs,” said Winkin.

They all looked scruffy and as if they’d been living rough, which was the general style in Hell, but in this setting they fit in well enough. Winkin’s eyes had no iris exactly and Nod was wearing a discreet anole behind one ear, but no one had noticed.

“Who’d have thought, flippin’ Lord Beelzebub,” said Winkin. “We’d’ve scarpered if we han’t seen you, guv’nor.”

“Look at it this way – who’d’ve thought me?” countered Crowley.

“Too right,” said Nod. “Famous, you are. That’s why. We didn’t scarper.”

“It was all over Below by the end of the day,” said Blinkin.

“Great big eff you to them Dukes and Princes.”

Aziraphale and “Bella” reappeared with six steaming drinks in cardboard carriers. There was just enough room for everyone to crowd around the grimy table they had staked out between the Centre and the High Street, where a few other doughty shoppers were taking advantage of the not-too-cold day for a sit-down.

“The music in there is _frightful_,” said Aziraphale. “I don’t go into these places. I had no idea.”

“Where’s your Christmas spirit?” said Crowley. The angel gave him a later-for-you stinkeye. “One of our best, innit? My idea, even. Drives everyone barmy.”

“I recall authorizing it,” said Beelzebub.

Winkin went on, “See, we was never that keen in the first place about gettin' killed by a bloody lot of smitin’ angels – beggin’ your pardon, guv’nor” (this to Aziraphale, who nodded) “just so Management could chalk up a win. What’s in it for us? More of the same. Work, work, work and get told off when Hastur’s feeling stroppy.”

“Busted me to bleeding salamanders just ‘cos I wrote down a trifle recipe on the back of my weekly report,” said Nod.

“I do love a good trifle,” said Aziraphale. “Made with Amontillado and Ayrshire cream.”

“So we just – sussed it out. Mammon en’t any nicer to his crew than Hastur or Pazuzu, and one of’ em worked out how to do the money up here. I can pay for pints. And halves.”

“I got this helmet. With a _card._”

“I got a railpass.”

“Did you ride backwards?” wondered Beelzebub, eyes alight.

“Never again. Nearly chundered my lunch and I’d just had kebabs.”

“Well, you seem to be getting on all right,” said Crowley.

“They need to be safer. Let me help them by – explaining things. It took me some time.”

“You could _lead_ us, guv’nor,” said Winkin. “We’re with you. Now we know you’re with us. There’s a lot of us with you. You could tell the boss to take a hike, we’d run things our way, not have to spend the whole day lookin’ at smarmy mottoes on the wall. We could have trifle whenever we wanted.”

“No,” said Beelzebub.

“You could punish Hastur, like. And Asmodeus. All the cack they’ve made us put up with.”

“_No,_” she said a little more firmly.

They looked at her as if she had two heads. Which was near to the truth, because the stress of the moment was close to making her faceted red fly-eyes manifest atop her head and her wings unfold. Crowley sensed the angel on full alert.

“There will be no changes of boss. There will be no leading or punishing or overthrowing. You walk away and make the life you want. With all the risks and chances. I will help you survive. I will not make you into a new Host with a leader and followers.”

“Demon Crowley, what about you? You’re a hero to us, like. You stood ’em down and now the word’s everywhere that no one touches you, not with the tip of a finger, no matter what you do. They’re afraid of you. You could do it.”

“I don’t hero,” said Crowley. “Not even slightly.”

“Then – “ Nod, seeming almost in tears, turned to the angel. “Stand for us? They’re afraid of real life angels, they are. We know about you too. They say you stood off the Four Bleedin’ Horsepersons with a flamin’ sword. Use it for us. We’ll follow you.”

“That was four human children, actually,” said Aziraphale. “You’ll find they’re much better role models than I am. There are quite a lot to study hereabouts. May I recommend it?”

“Bloody hell,” muttered Crowley, who professed to loathe children and had never been unkind to one. The angel had noticed.

“I will teach you about life on earth. And that is all I will do for now,” said Beelzebub, the flickers of light and dark around her form thankfully receding, leaving her only a Gothic-looking, possibly-old-enough-to-drink young woman in a puffer coat. “_We _will teach you. Yes?”

She looked at Crowley and the angel. Well, she _had_ been the Viceroy of Hell for six thousand years. Some force of personality was to be expected.

* * *

_“You say Rolls I say Royce_  
_You say God give me a choice_  
_ You say Lord I say Christ_  
_ I don't believe in Peter Pan_  
_ Frankenstein or Superman_  
_ All I wanna do is_  
_ Bicycle bicycle bicycle_  
_I want to ride my bicycle…_”

The Bentley’s speakers were blasting “Bicycle,” by John Knowles Payne. Blinkin, actually attired in her bicycle helmet, was in the passenger seat, bouncing up and down and clapping with delight. Crowley had taken them for a spin on the motorway, past the dairy plantation and back around to the High Street, just to entertain her while Beelzebub did something with the other two in the Town Centre.

“I love music!” cried Blinkin. “Is it all this good?”

“Don’t let Aziraphale talk you into Wagner,” said Crowley.

* * *

Beelzebub had Nod at the counter of the Vodafone outlet inside the Centre. “You only need something simple right now. Keep it safe. But you’ll be able to stay in touch if you all come up again together like this. I’ll take care of the others too. You will learn quickly.”

* * *

Aziraphale had gathered a small crowd of young children, plus Winkin, inside the Centre court, and was well into his magician’s patter.

“For my next remarkable illusion, I will need a pocket handkerchief. Has anyone got a handkerchief?”

“What’s a handkerchief?” asked one of the children who had drifted over, who had never used anything but paper tissues.

“You suck at this,” said a boy in a striped T-shirt.

“Will! Don’t use such language. Come here,” said a woman loaded with carrier bags, pulling him away.

Aziraphale made a doughty effort to pull a twopence from the boy’s ear. The coin popped out of his coat cuff.

But Winkin loved every moment of it.

* * *

Nod, newly attired in a slouch hat which completely covered the anole behind his ear, was loading apps onto his new phone when Crowley returned, having parked the Bentley across two spaces in the car park and herded Blinkin into the 3-Mobile to sort her out. Aziraphale had detoured Winkin into the Feltham Library, whence they emerged shortly after with a brand-new library card.

“You would do that,” said Crowley. And then grinned like an idiot, because the last thing he ever wanted was for his fusty, dithering angel to change. Beelzebub looked out at the darkening midwinter sky.

“I think they will be all right,” she said. “We can let them go their way – ”

“Isn’t that an – “ said Crowley.

For someone had passed them in the unmistakable, all too elegant livery of Heaven’s offices, with moussed hair and the oxymoronic air of overconfident social awkwardness that attends spending Eternity Upstairs. But he was himself listening to a phone through earbuds, jigging in time to the music in oblivious delight.

“Crowley, I do believe that Heaven is experiencing some dissent as well,” said Aziraphale.

“Bugger speculation, out of here,” said Crowley. He grabbed the angel’s hand and spilled out onto the street, the other four demons behind, only to see on the far pavement, near the quizzical portaloo, two more figures in the sharp suits of Heaven moving with intent. He’d been there in Aziraphale’s shape. He wouldn’t forget quickly. Fuck and buggeration. _Sandalphon._

Aziraphale saw the archangel at the same time. In a chain of bodies, one and all they whirled into a shelter from which a red bus had just heaved off in a gust of fumes, flattening themselves so that the adverts plastered around it concealed them from view. As Sandalphon passed they could hear: “I can handle one angel who should know better. We have this – arrangement with – the Other Side. You take this and if you see one of them up here, our writ is to _use it_ and ask questions later. For Heaven.”

Crowley peered between the adverts. Sandalphon was passing an athlete’s loop-lidded water bottle to the lesser angel, who took it. But then, surprisingly – as Sandalphon moved off, not looking back – raised both hands, poked his thumbs in his ears, waggled his fingers, and stuck out his tongue.

Before that could sink in, he had emptied the bottle into the nearby aggregate planter box. A layer of withered petals flushed into vivid bloom.

Aziraphale had seen it too. “Don’t think we need to worry about him, do you?” said Crowley. But the angel was no longer by his side. Four paces ahead, just at the edge of the streetside tables, the Principality Aziraphale was closing distance to tap the Archangel Sandalphon on his silk gabardine shoulder.

“A word?”

The bald angel whirled, paled. Aziraphale smiled beatifically.

“Charming,” he said, “one side helping the other rule with a rod of iron.”

“Traitor….” ground out Sandalphon.

“If you say so,” answered Aziraphale smoothly. “One who is off limits to anyone in Heaven, or so I guess. Am I right?”

“Don’t test me…”

“Oh, but I very much would love to. Come.” Aziraphale had a hand clamped at the archangel’s elbow, pivoted him, marching him along with a jog-trot step as they found a rhythm, back toward the deserted end of the High Street. “I think you would be well advised to leave that cherub alone. Wouldn’t he, darling?” he asided to Crowley, who was catching up to flank them.

“Traitor’s _catamite…_”

“Oh, _that _tears it,” said Crowley.

“Yes, I rather think it does,” said Aziraphale and threw Sandalphon off-balance into the entryway between two blocks of closed-up shops, following him to piston a brutal punch into the solar plexus of his earthly corporation. Sandalphon made a sound like outsize air brakes. Aziraphale followed up with a slam against the brick wall that produced a literal ringing sound. Sandalphon buckled to his hands and knees on the unattractive pavement of the entry.

“Sandalphon,” he said, rather indulgently, as one might explain things to a nephew who’d failed in social grace. “You took advantage of my reverence. Of my trust." He rolled the archangel over then with the toe of one shoe, rather daintily, making eye contact. "You brutalized me for fulfilling Her first commandment – to love. To love humanity. To love one creature over all the world. Something has gone terribly wrong if I have to tell you this. I recommend you go make the acquaintance of those whose water you're carrying, in a very literal sense. Whatever you do,_ leave us and our friends out of it.”_

The archangel made a gagging noise and spat. Was that a _tooth?_ Crowley’s eyes widened behind the dark glasses. “Some help, Crowley,” said the angel. Crowley got the idea and grabbed Sandalphon’s other arm. Together they frog-marched him to the portaloo, pausing as both of them scrabbled for a twenty-pee coin, and stuffed him into it.

“Annoying slaphead,” said Crowley.

Presently a whooshing sound as of a sanitary rinse reached their ears.

“I believe that’s got it,” said the angel.

“And here I told the neighbors you weren’t violent,” said Crowley, genuinely gobsmacked.

“Not at all. Merely precise,” said Aziraphale. “I gave him exactly what he gave me.” The angel massaged the wrist and fingers of one hand with the other. “You weren’t around when I learned to box Queensberry rules, were you? It seemed something to pass the time. Though I was always conflicted about it after – dear Oscar. But no work is ever wasted.” He dusted off his morning coat. “Shall we rejoin our companions?”

* * *

“I'll handle it at the other end,” said Beelzebub. “I am still a Lord of Hell. And this is why I must stay one. For now.” She nodded her head at the three junior demons, who looked shocked and chastened and were speaking together in a soft -voiced huddle.

“Aren’t you taking an insane chance by revealing yourself to them like this?” said Aziraphale. “They are so easily frightened…”

“Look at the chance you both took. And now I get to listen to poetry, and dance, and smoke amazing shit.” Aziraphale winced. “We’ll need to have some conversations about language,” said Crowley.

“Another time?” said Beelzebub. “There will, I think, be another time.”

Crowley nodded. She turned to the three demons.

“Come with me?” she said. “I have a remarkable herb for you to try.”

They moved off toward the Brookside turnoff, blurring out in the dimness.

“Come on, angel,” said Crowley. “Let’s get the _fuck_ out of TW 13.”

“What was that you just said about language, Crowley?” the angel chided.

* * *

In the car park, they began to feel the backdraft of the experience. Both their heads lolled against the leather seatback.

“It’s odd not being – so alone any more, isn’t it?” said Aziraphale.

“I can’t think of much more than getting home, angel.” Crowley gestured the Bentley’s engine into life. “That was – that was really you, you know. With Sandalphon. I – always forget. You’re so gentle.” Crowley’s hand dropped to brush fingers over the angel’s bruised knuckles. “You’re their hero. How does that feel?"

“A little uncomfortable,” said Aziraphale. “I’d far rather have some trifle.”

“The Ritz dessert trolley it is,” said Crowley, setting his hand on the shift lever.

“And on the subject of desserts – you know, if I knew you liked that kind of thing – the smoke is _so_ awful and acrid, but I have some lovely edibles back at the shop…”

Crowley stalled out – the demon himself, that is, not his car – in the article of shifting into first gear. He replaced both hands on the wheel. “You what.” His voice squeaked mortifyingly on “what.”

“Edibles. You know that little patisserie down the street? If you know which of their chefs to ask, he can make you these darling little gateaux with _just_ the right amount… I especially enjoy it for listening to Poulenc or Debussy, and some of the Minimalists don’t even make sense without it.”

“When,” said Crowley, still staring straight ahead, “were you going to tell me? Are we even _married?_ "

“I just – well, I know how devoted you are to your single malt and _bebop._ It didn’t occur to me you’d be interested.”

“Made that kind of mistake about me before, didn’t you? Well – scratch the Ritz.”

“Really, Crowley, are we going to quarrel over_ this_? What a silly thing to be cross about – “

Crowley growled deep in his throat. Aziraphale began to feel genuinely alarmed.

“I’ve heard there’s something else it goes very well with,” said the demon. And turned to gather Aziraphale’s whole jacket front in his two hands and pull him in for a fork-tongued, bruising, face-devouring kiss that went on until there was a faint film of vapour inside the Bentley’s windows.

“So,” he continued close to Aziraphale’s ear when the angel had gone more or less limp and was being held up mainly by his coat seams, “we’re going back to my flat. But we’re stopping by the shop first.”

“Of course,” agreed Aziraphale in a rather hazy, stunned tone.

“And then, well… maybe the Ritz later, if we feel like it.”

“I’m sure I’ll have an appetite by then,” said the angel.

**Author's Note:**

> An hommage to the London district of Feltham, Middlesex, where I was briefly familiar as the fiance of a man-child who actually lived in the Brookside flats. Crowley's opinion of the township is his own. Also, a love song to the self-cleaning portaloo in the Feltham City Centre, a dazzling amenity to someone from the States where there is widespread indifference to the plight of the public bladder. I have no idea if it is still there, but in memory yet green, etc.
> 
> True fact, in my ex's flat the bloody bog was actually facing the bloody door which opened directly into the foyer, facing the entry door. This required immortalizing, somehow.
> 
> I Officially Beg Forgiveness for the junior demons' talking like music-hall Cockneys, but that was how they spoke to me.
> 
> Comments are life! If you liked, don't just kudos and run! :)
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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